This has not been duly noted

Hey there!

Ugh I feel you. My “to read” pile has literally never gotten smaller these past couple of years because there’s always sooo! much! 

Here’s a post on how I personally read research articles (reblogged from my personal blog before this blog was born)

How I organize print-outs of reading material (scroll down to my reblog)

I also save an electronic pdf of each paper in their own subject folder. For example, my dissertation project is on ER+ breast cancer bone metastasis, so I have separate folders for papers on ER Signaling, Breast Cancer, Bone, Metastasis (general), ER+ Bone Metastasis, etc. When you start out with your project you may only have a few folders, but over time you may find yourself dividing them into more and more specific categories. 

I use excel to keep track and summarize papers (this is a method my PI also uses)

Here’s a super comprehensive post from @astudyinphd on how they read and organize their papers (both electronically using OneNote and physical print-outs, where they use my binder method from above)

I also recommend getting a citation manager to make your life easier when it comes time to write manuscripts/grants/etc. I use Mendeley because it’s free and cloud-based, but other options include Zotero (also free) and EndNote (costs $ but some institutions may have institutional licenses so it’s free for you). Here are a few other options. 

And YES, you are definitely not alone in facing that challenge. I started off the same way, and sometimes I still feel that way about papers (especially super dense ones where they pack like 5 new things per sentence--like these are all amazing data, but at what cost to my concentration??)

I personally think part of the problem lies within the writing itself--by nature of academia being pretentious and/or the requirement to say as much as you can about your figures and data in the smallest amount of space. 

So usually when I find myself re-reading the same paragraph over and over without absorbing anything I resort to just re-writing the damn thing myself by making an outline of the main points. Sometimes I even make my own figures because for me, numbers in text don’t mean a thing unless I can see it in graphical form (and that’s when you realize the authors may have done that on purpose, because in graphical form the data will sometimes look hmmm a touch dubious...)

I find actively taking notes and summarizing data as I read really helps me to a) stay focused, b) remember what I just read, c) stitch together all the data into the story the authors are telling me (or maybe form my own conclusions that don’t align with the authors’ and then ponder why that is), and d) avoid having to re-read the whole paper next time (bc I can just look over my notes). This is probably the best practical advice I can give regarding reading papers. You can try summarizing each paragraph and figure in your own words next time you read a paper, and see if that helps. 

And then the other part of the solution is, as you stated, practice. You slowly become more familiar with your field so you find yourself googling less things. You slowly realize you can just look at just the Figures and come away with the whole story that way. You recognize sometimes you don’t need the read the whole thing anyway, because you’re really just after one specific Method or Result. I even made this post a few weeks ago talking about how far I’ve come from when I started my PhD to now--when I’m 2 months away from defending--in terms of reading and understanding research articles. And you’ll get there too. 

“oh, so i’m a horrible person? i’m a bad friend? is that what you’re saying? maybe i should just leave you alone for good since everything i do seems to upset you.”

“i’m so fucking sorry, i’m sorry, oh my god, i don’t deserve to be alive, all i ever do is screw up and hurt people, i’m a terrible person, please don’t hate me - ”

“why does it make you uncomfortable? that seems like a weird thing to be uncomfortable about. please explain in minute detail and don’t forget to excavate the entirety of your tragic backstory so i can decide if it’s bad enough to justify your discomfort.”

“i mean, sure, but free speech - “ 

“okay, thank you for telling me. i may not fully understand why this thing is upsetting for you, but i will stop doing it because i care about your feelings.“ 

CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS

CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS 

CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS 

By renegademama (Janelle Hanchett)

RENEGADE MOTHERING

When I was 14 or so, I asked my grandmother why we didn’t have a “white club” at school. I don’t recall her response, but I do remember feeling particularly smug and vaguely angry that there was a “Latino” club and a “Chinese” club but not a “white” club.

Oh the unfairness! Oh the disparity! Why do we celebrate their heritage but not ours?

And I didn’t think about race again, at least not much, until I dated an African American man in college and a stranger whispered “nigger lover” in my ear one night as he walked by us in a grocery store. Disgusting.

I figured he was a strange exception of horrible racist creature. He was, after all, approximately 97 years old. (Well, 70, but he appeared 97 to my fresh young eyes.)

And then, a few months later, when my boyfriend’s roommate took me aside and asked why I have to “take a good black man who was in college,” when so many black men were incarcerated. I concluded she was crazy. And mean.

She hurt my feelings. Poor Janelle.

Beyond these few moments, and a couple others, I didn’t really think about race. Well, I thought about how people made arguments “about race” when clearly they were not. I mean why do they make race an issue? It’s obviously not.

Oh yeah, I had America all figured out: If ya work hard, you get ahead. And if you don’t get ahead, it’s because you made bad decisions. And if you get arrested it’s because you’re breaking the law, and people who break the law are more likely to be black. Obviously. That’s why they’re always getting arrested. (How’s that for some cyclic logic?)

I knew this to be true because:

America was awful to black people but that was fixed during the Civil Rights movement;

Therefore, we are all on equal footing now and if you don’t succeed it’s because you aren’t trying.

I learned it in school. It was fact. School teaches the truth.

And then, graduate school, and Professor Lee.

Oh, shit.

“Not all white people are white supremacists, but all white people benefit from white supremacy.”

WHAT THE WHAT?

She made us repeat it like a mantra. At least 3 times. I read Tim Wise’s White Like Me (I have mixed feelings about him now, but I digress) and bell hooks and David Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness and learned how our economic systems benefit from racism and we read about thehistory of American immigration laws (have you ever read them?) and colonialism in the Philippines and elsewhere (yes, America has colonies but we call them “territories”), and we read about redlining and white flight (ever wonder how black people ended up in urban centers?), and we read some DuBois and Omi & Winant and literature by people of color and all of the sudden I realized I had been fucking lied to.

I understood America through white eyes. I understood the world through the mainstream, polished glasses of a nice clean history of “we used to be bad now we’re not the end.”

Go team.

I discovered I was white.

“Not all white people are white supremacists, but all white people benefit from white supremacy.”

She wanted us to see that as individuals, not all white people are bigoted. But she also wanted us to see that every white person – whether they are bigoted or not – benefits from the racially structured hierarchies in America. They benefit from racism.

Yes. Even me. Even though I am not “racist.”

How? And she explained whiteness. She explained that “white” is the standard. White is the background against which difference is measured.

In other words, it’s “white” until further notice. It’s “white” until proven otherwise. It’s “white” or it’s the “other,” and it has nothing to do with actual numbers, percentages of “minority” population. It has to do with power. It has to do with the culture of power. What do I mean? If a comedy film features a white family, it’s a comedy. If it features a black family, it’s a blackcomedy.

Think about it.

White is the standard. And I’m white. Therefore, I am standard, and that benefits me.

When I walk into a room, I don’t fear that I’m representing my whole race. I have never acted badly then thought to myself “Oh shit, I sure hope they don’t hate all white people now.”

Or, in other words, even though pretty much every Columbine-type-school-kid-murderer is white, I’ve never developed a distrust for white, socially awkward high school kids.

A few do not represent the whole.

“Privilege is passed on through history.”

Whatever. I grew up POOR!

But then I thought about how, in the late 1940s, my grandmother was the first woman editor of the University of Washington’s newspaper. After she graduated, she and my grandpa bought and ran small newspapers in northern California. The family business they built employed my family members for 40+ years.

In the late 1940s, black people were not allowed to sit in the front of the bus.

How can I deny that my grandparents’ access to education and economic success did not materially affect me in a positive way, directly, through my father? I thought about the loans my parents were able to take with financial backing from my grandparents, and how that benefitted me. My life. My quality of life. The neighborhoods we lived in. The schools we attended. My cultural knowledge.

“Why don’t we have ‘White History Month?’”

Because White History Month is every month other than February, asshole.

Oh, shit indeed.

“The culture of power determines which version of history is told and retold.”

Prior to the Women’s Rights Movement, women were stuck in the home while men went to work and supported them. But then women were liberated and able to get jobs working outside the home.

Right?

WRONG. White, middle to upper class women were “stuck in the home.” Women of color have ALWAYS “worked out of the home.” In fact, the women of color were probably working in the homes of the white women about which our history is written.

So one of the most oft-repeated, trusted narratives about American history erases the history of women of color. It is dead fucking wrong. It isn’t even kind of right. They are erased. Non-existent. Unseen.

They are Chapter 10. They are a chapter that ends with “but then Martin Luther King, Jr., and all is well.”

They are Chapter 10. I am chapters 1 through forever, and every day I cash in on that fact, whether or not I support the systems making that happen for me.

I realized the reason I had never thought about race was because I was of the privileged one, because I didn’t have to, NOT BECAUSE RACIAL DISPARITY DIDN’T EXIST. I didn’t have to think about race because I was having a fundamentally different life experience than people of color. But I could ignore them, because of my privilege.

I was able to hang out in meltin-pot, “post-racial” land was because the structures of that society allowed (and encouraged) me to “not see race” while continually feeding me narratives about “equality,” “multiculturalism,” “color-blindness” and “ghetto urban lifestyles.”

I spent a lot of time in graduate school in the library, writing at a computer. Like, hours. Whole days. When I had to pee, I would ask the person sitting next to me to watch my stuff so I didn’t have to pack it all up and carry it down the hall to the bathroom. I did it a 100 times.

Once I looked over at the person next to me and my first thought was “Oh you can’t ask him. He’ll steal your stuff.

He was a young black man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt.

I was sickened at myself. I was horrified at my response. There was absolutely nothing different about him than the 100 other people I didn’t hesitate to ask, except he was black.

I realized that not only do I benefit historically and presently, every day, from the color of skin, I have also internalized cultural narratives regarding blacks and whites that manifest whether or not I support them.

“Hey, would you mind watching my stuff for a minute?”

But what now?

Does it mean my grandmother’s accomplishments are less badass? Nope. Does it mean I do not “deserve” success? Nope. Does it mean that I am a bad person? Nope.

It means that we live in a highly racialized society rooted in a history of discrimination and that we have a long way to go. It means that I have had an advantage over people of color. Yes, always. Yes, no matter what. Because even if you’re poor and white you can join the culture of power by learning the walk and talk. But you can’t change your skin color.

From the day I was first introduced to this “other story,” I couldn’t get enough. Not because I’m some sort of saint or conspiracy theorist, but because I was curious. I was interested out of a sense of shared humanity. And I was fucking angry that I had been swindled. I wanted the truth. Or, I wanted a fuller picture. I wanted more sides.

That, my friends, is pathetic in its privilege.

I learned in graduate school what every person of color knows through life experience. I learned in graduate school that we weren’t “fixed” during the Civil Rights movement.

But when this information was presented to me I felt a sense of relief, because I think deep down I always knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I don’t understand the white rage I keep reading on the internet.

Just another dead thug.

He got what he deserved.

Run over the protestors. They’re making me late for work.

STOP PLAYING THE “RACE CARD.”

I don’t understand it. What’s at stake, people? What’s at stake in accepting that racism exists? Or even entertaining the thought? Are people really so stupid they can’t fathom that other people might be having a different experience than they are? Is it really that hard to comprehend that something can exist EVEN THOUGH YOU DON’T PERSONALLY SEE IT?

(Although you’ll see your privilege if you’re willing to examine your life honestly.)

Why the hell are people so unwilling to listen?

Let’s think about this for a moment. A whole community of people are saying this exists. Data shows racial disparities in economic, education, justice, and healthcare systems. Basically, ALL OVER THE PLACE. Unarmed black boys and men are killed without recourse. Repeatedly. The comment sections of these crimes are riddled with assholes shouting “Good. One less loser.”

But people still claim “Racism doesn’t exist.” But here’s the thing: The only way you can discount the words, lives, efforts and voices of hundreds of thousands of people is THROUGH THE RACISM YOU CLAIM DOESN’T EXIST.

You can only ignore them if they’re aren’t worth hearing.

You can only ignore them if they’re liars. If they’re just looking for a handout.

If they’re not human like you.

You can only ignore them by using the very narratives you claim aren’t happening.

And let’s be honest, we can only ignore them because it’s easy, because we’ll never have to walk a day in their shoes, and it’s just so much more pleasant to turn away, look away, focus back on our lives.

But the sand is getting skimpy and our heads are showing. At this point, if we’re not part of the solution we’re part of the problem.

I’m using my voice to talk to you. I’m using my voice to talk to my kids. But it isn’t enough. We’re looking for places to volunteer. I’m looking for actions I can take.

We’re at a crossroads. This cannot go on. We’re crushed under the weight of hatred, history, silence, violence, bullshit media and the insidious defense of systematic unequal distribution of resources, and at some point, none of us will be able to breathe.

It feels small and pathetic to be one person in this mess. I feel stupid and vulnerable and slightly insane to be writing this here, now. But fuck my feelings. Fuck feeling uncomfortable. Fuck the nonsense that keeps us quiet and content and cozy in our little post-racial dreamland.

They can’t breathe, and I’m breathing just fine.

And that is precisely the problem.

Midterms are approaching, and one thing that I’ve always noticed in my own students is that some of them are really anxious about e-mailing me to ask for things. This is frustrating for both of us, because I can’t help them if they don’t ask for it, and they can’t get what they need if they’re too anxious to ask for help! So, I’ve written up a bit of a guide with some advice. 

Generally, the types of e-mails students are anxious about are requests for things like extensions or excused absences. I’ve been a TA/head lecturer for six years now and have gotten literally thousands of student e-mails. The fact is, your professor isn’t going to dissect your e-mail for every little tonal shift. Don’t worry about it! I give you official permission to not over-analyze the e-mails you’re sending to your professor/TA/whomever asking for a couple extra days on that paper! Just be polite, honest, and succinct. Generally, student e-mails are read very quickly, unless there’s extenuating circumstances or the request is unusual. The format I suggest to my students and that I often use when I’m contacting someone for the first time professionally goes like this:

Greeting Introduction, if it’s a big class or you don’t know the professor well. Description of problem/Question. Steps you’ve taken so far to correct your problem. Where you’re at now. Query about further steps. Thanks, Your name (first and last)

This is just a skeleton- you don’t necessarily need every single part. But it is good to let your professor know what you’ve done to fix the problem on your own- whether that’s getting notes from a friend, taking things to the writing center, etc. Not all problems have an obvious solution, but if you’ve done something, letting them know shows your instructor that you’re taking ownership of the situation.

A formal e-mail like this also helps you judge their response to your situation. If you’re overwhelmed and having emotional distress, that’s not something that every professor is sympathetic about, unfortunately. If you don’t have a good gauge on how they react to students, keeping your e-mail very task-oriented without giving too much away about your emotional state can be healthier for you and will lead to better outcomes re: the thing you need.

A couple of good tips:

- Check your syllabus for your teacher’s absence policies. Many universities and/or departments require documentation, and if you can provide this ahead of time, it’ll be easier for you. 

- Talk to the person who has the most direct contact with you in the class. This means that if you have a TA who leads your section, ask them your questions before the professor or head lecturer. Most likely, the TA is the one who’s handling the direct permissions for excused absences or extensions. If you’ve gotten to know your TA a bit, they can advocate for you for things like permission to take a test earlier or later. 

- If you need to make arrangements for alternative test dates, always go earlier if you possibly can. 

- Don’t make up fake excuses or exaggerate; honesty is important, and professors have seen some very creative lies. By now, we’re good at detecting them. I once had a student who e-mailed about a car accident and attached a photo of a car with a smashed headlight as “evidence.” The picture was the fourth result on google for “car with broken headlight.” Had the student just asked for what they wanted, they may have gotten it; instead, all they did was infuriate their TA and give me a good example of why you shouldn’t lie about why you’re missing class. 

- If you have a disability that affects your work or your ability to attend classes, your school should have an office of disability/disability resource center. In the US, disabled students’ accommodations are protected by the ADA, and getting a letter of accommodation will ideally ensure that your needs are met. If your professor pushes back against your accommodations (unfortunately, that happens sometimes), go back to your DRC and let them know, because that’s a violation of federal law. Remember that learning disabilities, physical disabilities, and mental illness are all protected by law- you can get accommodations for any of those conditions! 

- Always end your e-mail with a question. The question mark flags the e-mail as something actionable, something the person can answer immediately. Just seeing the ? makes your e-mail something to deal with now rather than later. 

  - Boomerang is a free* tool for Gmail that can:      o Schedule your e-mails, so if you’re writing an e-mail at 3 AM and you feel         weird about your instructor seeing you’re up that late, you can set the mail         to send at 8 AM instead.      o Attach read receipts that tell you when the e-mail was opened, if you’re            worried about it not getting read.      o Score your e-mail on how likely a response is based on subject length,             word count, question count, reading level, and advanced features you can         pay to unlock including positivity, politeness, and subjectivity. *Mostly free- a lot of the basic tools are free, but some you have to pay to unlock. I’ve never used any of the paid features.

How to Use Boomerang

The screenshot below shows you how Gmail integrates with Boomerang- if you install it as a browser extension, it automatically generates the buttons. No special work required. There’s also an app for iOS and Android. I wrote this e-mail using the template that I’ve provided at the end of this post; it’s short, polite, and gets the message across clearly. For initial contact e-mails, you really can just fill in the blanks.

The little blue envelope in the bottom center-right is how you turn on the read receipt feature. Your recipient will not be notified that you got a read receipt, so don’t worry about that. The green bar in the bottom right is the respondable score, and the red button on the bottom left is how you schedule your e-mail to go out at a scheduled time. 

This is a screenshot of how the respondablity is graded. There’s sweet spots for different aspects of the e-mail. It can tell you if your e-mail is too wordy or too concise to be helpful, based largely on statistical estimates. It’s not always right! Some e-mails need to be wordier or more complicated than others! But it’s a helpful guideline.

Copy and Paste (and then edit) (unless your name really is [Your name]

Finally, a template that you can just copy and edit to your heart’s content. Don’t be afraid to talk to your professors- even if they are brusque or don’t give you the response you want, polite communication wherein you outline your problem and your solution is a really worthwhile skill to develop. And the more you communicate with your teachers, the more comfortable you’ll feel. So don’t be afraid! Reach out to your instructors whenever you need something!

Dear [Name],

My name is [Name] and I’m in your [Time] [Course title and course number] class.  [Brief explanation of problem], and was hoping that I [brief description of solution]. I currently [steps you’ve taken- pages written, are you getting notes from a classmate, etc.], but need [state exactly what you need]. Is there any way I [proposal for solution]?

Thanks, [Your name]

“Fly you fucking fools”

“I bid you all a very fucking fond farewell”

“Oh gandalf it was just a bit of fucking fun” “oh you’re probably right as fucking usual”

someone gave the idea of doing a survey on diversity amongst hockey fans!! if you’d like to participate, please take the survey linked above :)

also, if you want, pls reblog I’m trying to get as many people as possible to take this survey

and floridians are just as human as you and me!

and the moral of the story is that there are no deadly snakes native to alaska

you might know this guy as one of the only archaeologists cool enough to be mentioned by indiana jones

it’s my dream to have my name said by harrison ford

i’m not going to apologize for having this class at 6am because you paid for it and it’s your fault. 

we don’t all dress like lara croft. i tried to get it to be a thing on a dig and my colleagues yelled at me. 

they were pretty good archaeologists except they were too racist to realize anything they found. 

i take back what i said about us not dressing like lara croft because lewis binford here is wearing nothing but short shorts and a cowboy hat. take notes for an academic halloween costume!

archaeologists can be good artists! not me, though. or anyone i know. but if you can draw just know you have options.

sometimes you find dead bodies when you dont really expect it and you just have to deal with it

archaeologists are the only people allowed to get exited when they find corpses. 

once i ruined thanksgiving dinner when i told my family i had gotten my degree in archaeology and my uncle commented he liked dinosaurs too

ah yes. archaeologists. or, as i love to call us,  pottery analysts

i mean he was kind of a good guy for helping us beat britain but he owned slaves so that really cancelled it out.

archaeology is like cultural anthropology, except after you interview the person you turn around and shoot them in the head.

do not use trees! trees are bad! don’t do it!

usually you find shards, but it’s super exciting when you find a really big shard

it’s basically like a waterpark, except you’re fully clothed and walking through a dark tunnel knee deep in muddy water. so, basically splish splash.

 i dont believe in curses but my colleagues and i like to encourage the idea of them so people stop touching our stuff

usually, you would find a knife in a kitchen. or underneath your pillow to really freak out your roommate who is a history nerd and has no idea why you would sleep with a knife under your pillow and he’ll get really scared and freaked out and okay i’m getting off topic

no matter what the other scientists say, archaeology is a real science.

don’t worry, i promise you, and whatever government agency that’s spying on me right now,  that i’m not a crazy communist trying to overthrow the government

by now you’ve noticed the big “POP QUIZ” written on the board. there isn’t one, but i wanted to see the looks on your face when you saw it. but you’re all dead inside so it’s not really funny.

everything was fine except the citizens of pompeii just woke up dead the next day

the number one question you should ask when you read old archaeology papers is “how the hell do you know?”

nothing pisses off old men more than young people asking “why” and “prove it” so do that as often as possible

when in doubt, it’s ritualistic

coprolites are the only shit archaeologists get excited over

i know the only reason you’re not laughing at my hilarious jokes is because it’s early 

they called it the garbage project. which is also what people call the projects i work on when we apply for funding.

what you have to realize is that people are fundamentally weird. they do weird stuff now and they have done it thousands of years ago.

things come and go but pottery is forever

i dont know if you all know this but moose are terrifying abominations. 

and today’s lesson is about the difference between dirt and soil!

please, please, please do not eat old butter you found buried in a bog.

a country playlist for a friend who is playing rdr2 but doesn’t actually like country

soft pop bops

bad 70s/80s music that i love a lot

early 2000′s nostalgia playlist for kids that were born 1995-1999 and dont fit with millennials or gen z

songs about witches, fortune tellers and strange things

songs that remind me of old gods waking from a long slumber

southern gothic

an oldies playlist with voices as sweet as honey

so every dot on this map is basically someone’s queer experience: coming out, meeting their future wife, seeing another gay man in public for the first time, anything you can think of that truly left a mark on them

It’s no secret to the Japanese that Shinjuku nichome is the gay district of Tokyo but about half the pins left there are for the same club in that area named gold finger. Definitely a place to check out if you’re looking to get involved in the Japanese queer community for whatever reason, it seems.

I have a sneaking suspicion this submission is a haiku when written in Japanese…

This guy got the scenic view I guess

Is this how people feel while reading deep romantic poetry because wow I’m moved.

Honestly the best feeling is learning we’re not as alone as we’ve been led to believe